Trying to be more gender-neutral with baby

[Aykarralyu]

We're expecting a baby in Nov and I've been thinking about the differences between a son and a daughter.

Differences start immediately - people talk about blue or pink wallpaper etc - and I'm really cautious about this. I've read that babies are born with only small psychological differences and that their male or female character is then developed as they're raised.

Something that occurs to me though, is that I have a desire for my child to be successful in life. This means happiness - for which I want empathy, compassion and appreciation of simple pleasures (imo), but it also means ambition and drive.

We talk about glass-ceilings, and in my opinion, the people who get to the top in life are the ones that are willing to make sacrifices; they are more competitive, aggressively pushing themselves and limiting their time with friends and family. Personally, I'm not like that and am not prepared to put in the hours to achieve that next promotion or whatever. I think a lot of women are like this. However, I think this is changing - and I think that's a good thing in terms of female representation. However, when women are successful, we often don't like them as people - they don't have many of the characteristics we value in women. "A woman? Not on my terms", said Glenda Jackson about Margaret Thatcher... Rebekah Brooks always seems a nasty piece of work too... (limited examples, I know). But, it does seem to me that women are becoming more aggressive than they used to be - you often read about violence perpetrated by teenage girls that is quite shocking, but wouldn't have been so shocking if it had been boys.

Maybe, I'm getting confused, but it seems to me that in challenging all the female stereotypes - people complaining on here about adverts of women doing housework etc - we are raising girls that have more traditionally male characteristics... and yet feminism is often centred around complaining about male characteristics. Shouldn't feminism be more about teaching boys to be more like girls than teaching girls to be more like boys? And if that's correct, then why does a lot of feminism exclude men from the discussion?

I think I've wandered a bit off track, but I want to be a bit clearer on this - grandparents are already talking about what toys they're buying and what hobbies little-un should be into. If we have a girl, in all honesty, what was so bad about the traditional female character? confused!!!!

Spirited, it's a lot easier to sell more stuff if you can convince people with mixed sex children that they can't just hand-me-down everything.

No wonder young boys grow up into confused men, with no merit givern to traditional masculinity. Its like people playing games with childrens gender just to seem right on and trendy

How might anything mentioned here confuse boys?

Its like people playing games with childrens gender just to seem right on and trendy

No, it's nothing to do with being right on and trendy. It's about not putting little ones into pre-determined boxes whether or not they fit.

Oh purlease

Ridiculous sonlypuppyfat - I have a boy, and whilst he's always gravitated towards things with wheels (and zeroed in on cars in particular now), he couldn't care less about any of the other gender stuff BECAUSE HE'S 2 if he sees something pink and sparkly, he thinks it's pink and sparkly, not that it's something for a girl.

He's not confused about his gender, he's not confused about what he's supposed to be. He's praised for being kind when he shares, he's praised for being brave after his vaccinations, he's told he's pretty if he's playing dressup with necklaces, and strong when lifting up a 4 pinter of milk, and that feels liks the right thing to do.

DP is rubbish at traditional masculine stuff, so I do the majority of DIY, car stuff etc. and I'm barely adequate at housework (or perhaps I just don't care) and both of us are secure and unconfused about who we are.

DS is being raised as DS, not as a generic little boy. How can that be wrong or confusing.

No wonder young boys grow up into confused men err, do they? Wan't aware of this myself. Can you give some examples?

Some really good points have been made. But I did wonder if anyone had thoughts on whether there was a good AND bad side of girls growing up with much less confined ideas and adherence to stereotypes. Anecdotal, but there really are some very aggressive young women out there these days.

I suppose the question (for me) is: how can I give my children room to express themselves? They need to discover their own interests and persue their own goals etc without feeling the need to conform especially to what I want, and by extention, what society wants. We all rather have to conform as society is about compromising our liberties with those of others. Being competely unconstrained by societal norms is the definition of physcopathic behaviour.

Where am I going with this? That choice of clothes, jobs and interests should be areas where we should be having very little imput. Instilling socital norms, on the otherhand, along the lines of politeness, respecting others and so on, we should be having a lot more imput.

I don't believe girls don't go round bashing other girls because they are imitating boy behaviour. I don't believe dressing 2yo girls in boys clothes will encourage them to act like boys.

I don't think you need to worry about gender neutral or boy/girl characteristics.

I want my children to be kind, generous, ambitious, strong, confident - those aren't male or female traits.

I want them to be physical, wear bright, practical, fun clothing and be able to run, jump, climb and throw and kick a ball - those shouldn't be male or female traits either.

I think the thing with feminism is ensuring your child isn't disadvantaged or held back because they are female. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be female, should be more male, or shouldn't have a gender at all.

ChunkyPickle your DS is still a baby of course he likes pretty things and playing my DS is a 6' 14 years old and is a young man you have to compare like with like

OP, agreed that traditional women's roles have broken down in some ways, but as other posters have observed, we live in a more aggressively gendered world, especially for children, than ever before. Young women take the brunt of this, imo, taught to obsess over their bodies, the female image is relentlessly sexualised and openly mocked everywhere they turn. And all young people exist in a deafening whirlpool of advertising, where the message is that what matters is what you buy, you're supposed to express your personality and values through consuming (and yet castigated for not working or saving, but that's another thread...) with little in the way of creative, fulfilling work, education or training available.

It's complicated, is what I suppose I'm saying, but if I had to talk about all the problems young people today have (and I don't think that "very aggressive young women" are top of my list of concerns) I wouldn't be talking about either the breakdown of stereotypes or the value of the traditional female role, no. And if young people are angry, I think there's a lot to be angry about.

One of the few good things going on today in this country is that women have better legal rights than ever before - to own property, to leave their marriages and relationships, to be protected from sexual violence (did you know that rape within marriage was legal until the 1990s?), equal rights to work and pay. I say legal rights because I am all too aware that in practice, women's lives continue to lag men's - poorer, less employed, more vulnerable, less visible (another whole other thread...). None of that would sit particularly easily within the traditional female role, which I am not nostalgic for for a second.